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ANDY GARCIA

May 24, 2026

Diamond, The Untouchables, Dead Again, Phantom Thread
Cannes Dispatch festival ticket
Diamond, The Untouchables, Dead Again, Phantom Thread

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER

During the end credits of Andy Garcia’s new film – in which he produced/directed, took the lead and composed the music – he thanks his daughter, Danielle (who also appears in the movie), for asking him to help with her English homework. The genesis of creating a neo-noir following a period-obsessed gumshoe, Joe Diamond, as he investigates the death of a billionaire and resists the 21st century was a Raymond Chandler assignment for Danielle 20 years ago. Garcia has always loved film noir (and been in films set in the period, including The Untouchables and Dead Again), and discovered a story had been marinating in him for years. ‘I started improvising this character. It was like, ‘Where did that voice come out of me? I didn’t know I had that voice’,’ he tells Hollywood Authentic on the roof terrace of the Marriott in Cannes where he is debuting Joe Diamond. ‘I think we got a ‘B’ on the report card for the homework, but the first thing that came out of me is still in the movie. And then I thought maybe there’s a movie with this guy.’ 

Garcia spent years noodling with Diamond’s characterisation and his rejection of the modern world – he lives a fully analog life despite the Waymo cars and robot deliveries that he runs into around LA. As a Fedora-wearing PI with an office in the Bradbury Building and a 1940 Plymouth Coupe, Joe may be out of step with selfies and TikTok, but he can crack a case using good old fashioned detective work and nous. ‘He’s like Batman. He has a Batcave, which is where he lives, and he’s got one suit, and he’s got his Batcar. Why is he the way he is? I didn’t know what it was until I had this dream. I woke up in the middle of the night and I was crying in my sleep. I immediately wrote ‘the only thing worse than crying yourself to sleep is crying in your sleep’.  And that haunted me. Of course, I’m enamoured with the genre, and the photographic elements and the style of it all, but that was the key.’ 

Diamond, The Untouchables, Dead Again, Phantom Thread

Garcia drew inspiration from photographers such as Fan Ho and Herman Leonard, along with the work of cinematographers Nestor Almendros, Conrad Hall and Gordon Willis, as well as Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’. And he made LA, a city he’d known since 1978 when he moved there as a young actor, a character in itself with iconic locations such as the Clifton Cafeteria, Angel’s Flight, Central Market and the now-closed Cole’s French Dip and Original Pantry Cage woven into the tale. And while the case at the heart of the story drives the narrative, it is the trauma that Joe lives with that provides the twists. No spoilers on the grief at the heart of the characterisation, but that case involves a murdered billionaire and his beautiful wife, Sharon Cobb, who is the assumed perp by LAPD detective led by Brendan Fraser. ‘When I was thinking about making the movie I wondered who am I going to make the movie with?’ Garcia says. ‘And then I saw this young lady in Phantom Thread, and I said, ‘I’m not making the movie without her’.’

Tapping Vicky Krieps as Sharon, Bill Murray as Joe’s barkeep manager, Danny Huston as an oily lawyer, Rosemary DeWitt as a mysterious romantic prospect and Dustin Hoffman as a joke-cracking, noodle-slurping pathologist, Garcia scraped independent financing together (‘I could never get any support from traditional studios or streamers’) to make his movie in 25 days over 40 locations and 59 sets. As if he didn’t already have enough to do, he also co-wrote the music with jazz legend Arturo Sandoval, and personally performed the Diamond theme. Though it’s period specific and loaded with noir touches and muted trumpets, Diamond is still very much its own thing, says Garcia. ‘It was very important not to fall into the trap – all of us – of ‘this is film noir, and we’re going to smoke the cigarette, and am I a villain or will I be a gentleman or whatever?’ There has to be a true humanity.’ As an actor/director he felt at ease giving his cast what he calls ‘a sacred place for us to play’. ‘Once I know what the composition is, I don’t need to go back to the monitor and interrupt our flow, and say, ‘Let me look at that take, and see how you’re doing’. I’ve worked in movies, even with actors that aren’t directing, who do a take, and then they get up and look at the take. When the actor comes back I go, ‘hey, it’s me and you here. It’s not about what you see in yourself. You’re breaking the energy of what we’re doing here’.  It’s an insecurity. It’s very important that we’re going to discover this thing moment to moment, take to take. It needs to be alive.’

Diamond, The Untouchables, Dead Again, Phantom Thread

A recurring theme in the film is Joe’s dismissal of social media, despite being an urban legend on it – with people he encounters during his investigation understanding him through the lens of TikTok and wanting selfies. ‘The social media world, that whole thing – somehow, it does tank your life,’ Garcia muses. ‘It’s the death of tranquillity in a way. You have to make a choice. Do you abandon it all together, or use it in a constructive way to promote a piece of work? People are starting to make movies to watch on their iPhones. Things have to happen in the first three minutes of the story, or else people will turn it off. But this movie was definitely designed for a big screen.’

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Diamond premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

RUTH WILSON

May 24, 2026

Victorian Psycho, Jason Isaacs, Maika Monroe, Thomasin McKenzie
Cannes Dispatch festival ticket
Victorian Psycho, Jason Isaacs, Maika Monroe, Thomasin McKenzie

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER

Ruth Wilson describes herself as a ‘Cannes virgin’ when she sits down with Hollywood Authentic on the roof of the Palais de festival and we look down on the crowds and red carpet below. ‘It’s sometimes a bit absurd. I love it. What a wonderful thing to have in celebration of film. But the film is also separate from the other stuff – the side shows. It’s great for people watching.’ People watching is something of a full time occupation for actors and Wilson has arrived at the festival with a film its director, Zachary Wigon, calls ‘demented’. In Victorian Psycho, based on Virginia Feito’s book, she plays Mrs Pounds, the 19th century lady of Ensor House where governess Winifred Notty (Maika Monroe) arrives to care for her two children. Winifred is a Jane Eyre type with blood lust, a woman who struggles to tamp down her murderous instincts while sparring with her snooty employer. A comedy horror that reclaims the genre for women, it shares some sensibilities with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma which opened the festival’s Un Certain Regard section. 

Victorian Psycho, Jason Isaacs, Maika Monroe, Thomasin McKenzie

‘There’s a sense that in horror movies women were always the victims, running around in t-shirts and getting wet. So it is exciting to be in a project where the women are the ones in power, taking revenge, are having the fight,’ says Wilson. It’s not the first time she’s dabbled in psychopathic characters – she’s played Alice in Luther since 2010, a trailblazer for unapologetic on-screen women. ‘I love playing those things that are usually attributed to men. It feels like freedom as a performer, as a female.’ There’s also a through-line from Victorian Psycho to Wilson’s breakout role, when she played Jane Eyre in the BBC’s 2006 adaptation of the Charlotte Brontë novel. Many of the tropes of that celebrated tale are subverted and questioned in Victorian Psycho to viciously amusing effect. Wilson is currently reading Villette by Brontë and thinks the rebelliousness of the genre has always been there. ‘She writes very complicated, interesting, funny, dry-witted women. It’s sort of misconceived somehow.’

Victorian Psycho, Jason Isaacs, Maika Monroe, Thomasin McKenzie

Wilson was drawn to the project because of its comedy as well as playing the other side of the Jane Eyre coin – lady of the house rather than ingénue governess. ‘I’d just done a really intense play, which was wonderful, with Michael Shannon [A Moon For The Misbegotten at the Almeida], and I was like, ‘This will be a palate cleanser in its own way’. There’s something really juicy, funny and satirical about it, as well as being violent and gory. There’s something about [Mrs Pounds] – that repression, which is really interesting. When Winifred comes in, there’s a sort of disgust and desire line – a very fine line between the two with her. She’s as psychopathic as Maika’s character in some ways.’

The idea of women being pitted against each other isn’t something new, she reflects. ‘I don’t think it’s modern, it’s always been the case. A repressed group of people will fight for their own freedom – and maybe at the expense of someone else in their group. You’d hope we’d all help each other out, but that’s not always the case. It delves into that female dynamic.’ There’s also something recognisable in the way actresses are measured against each other and the prizing of youth. Wilson nods. ‘I think it’s a really interesting time, actually, for women, and it’s great to have those amazing actors ahead of me, who are ploughing that furrow for me. Your career’s not over in your 40s. It’s only getting more interesting, and that’s really exciting for me. And it’s lovely to see yourself reflected on screen. I’ve just worked with Emma Thompson [on Down Cemetery Road], and she’s an action hero. She’s being blown up, chased and shot at. And she’s like, ‘I’ve never done action. I’m doing action roles in my 60s’. I love that.’

Victorian Psycho, Jason Isaacs, Maika Monroe, Thomasin McKenzie

Coming up she’s returning to the Luther world alongside Idris Elba in the second film of the series. ‘Well, she’s not dead, which is great,’ she laughs when asked what we might expect from Alice, who seemingly died at the end of season five, falling from scaffolding. ‘I hadn’t played her for seven years so stepping back inside her, it was like, ‘Wow, this is interesting. How do I do this?’ But the dynamic is so instinctive with Idris and she comes back a bit darker.’ Given she’s a murderer and a psychopath, how much darker? ‘Darker…’ is all she’ll tease before she goes back to observing the circus on the Cannes Croisette.

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

MARION COTILLARD

May 23, 2026

Guillaume Canet, Karma, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Roma Elastica
Guillaume Canet, Karma, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Roma Elastica

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER

Marion Cotillard has brought movies to Cannes numerous times – it’s not her first rodeo – but this year she arrives with two, both special to her for different reasons. ‘These are two movies that I love so much, that were amazing experiences for me as an actress,’ she tells Hollywood Authentic as we catch up with her at The Majestic Hotel on the Croisette just before the premiere for her second film of the fest, Bertrand Mandico’s Roma Elastica. The French actor had debuted Karma days before, her film with her longtime collaborator and former partner, Guillaume Canet (who writes and directs). In it she plays Jeanne, a woman with unspoken trauma who is blamed when her godson goes missing in her care. Jeanne drinks to forget her past, is messy and mysterious; and though the police assume she might be the prime suspect in the boy’s disappearance, her husband (played by Leonardo Sbaraglia) refuses to believe that she could harm a child. When Jeanne disappears, her husband attempts to find her and Karma unwinds the dual stories of each spouse. To say more would be to spoil, but it’s a role that demands a great deal from Cotillard, emotionally and physically, as she fights abuse and cruelty.

Guillaume Canet, Karma, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Roma Elastica

‘Guillaume had wanted to write a movie for me for a long time. We worked together on several movies, but he wanted to write a movie that would be, from the beginning to the end, all about my character,’ Cotillard says of the juicy project. ‘For a few years, I was not very happy with the projects that came my way. I was never totally taken by all the propositions that I had. I really wanted something strong and intense, and he knew that.’ Canet came across an article about a religious community and began to write a story for Cotillard. ‘I strongly responded to this idea,’ Cotillard enthuses. ‘It really got into my blood, and that’s what I need when I get involved in a project. I need to be passionate right away. I felt that I would want to give everything to this character and this film. It’s one of the most beautiful presents that I’ve had as an actress, and especially from him.’

Jeanne is fragile but also strong, cowed but also determined, a treat for an actor to play. ‘What I love about this character is that she doesn’t fit into the world she lives in. Her rebellious soul is turned into craziness. Her nature is stronger than this box we want to put her in. It creates a lot of pain, a lot of anger, a lot of misunderstanding – even from herself.’ The role demands that Cotillard put herself in some dark situations and mindset. How does she protect herself as an actor from being mentally and emotionally hurt by her work? ‘I have to say: I love experiencing very dark and complex characters. And Guillaume knows it,’ she laughs.  ‘He really pushed everything to this intensity, because he knew that that is where I find my power as an actress. That was a very, very intense role for me, and I wanted to dive in 100%. I knew that it would be hard sometimes to go through all of this. But when you trust a director that much; when you know that he’s going to take care of you, and he’s going to be there when emotionally it’s that intense… On a set, he is such a powerhouse, pushing people to give their best.’

Guillaume Canet, Karma, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Roma Elastica

This is an actor who has essayed Lady Macbeth, a paraplegic in Rust & Bone, Edith Piaf. That said, she admits some days were particularly difficult as Jeanne is punished physically and mentally. ‘But I knew that when I would go back to my room after a very intense scene, all the people around would support me and every day was magical because of this. You know that you’re totally free to give everything you have, because you have the support of Guillaume and all the people that he put together to achieve something that is great. I would go back to my room and cry all the tears that I had to cry out, and scream to get those feelings out… because, yes, you’re acting, but your body is really experiencing it. At the end of the day, you need to have this energetic cleaning, so you can start the next day not being in pain because of the character.’On the flipside, Cotillard also has Bertrand Mandico’s Roma Elastica at Cannes. In it she plays a fading eighties film star with a brain tumour who is trying to complete a shoot on a sci-fi set in 2026 and filming in the Italian capital. ‘I didn’t know the work of Bertrand Mandico,’ Cotillard admits. ‘When I received the script and a mood board, it was very peculiar. From the first pages I was taken by the story of this woman, by this world that is so specific to Bertrand Mandico. I loved this very weird project  and I was like, ‘OK, I’m going there’. I love working with artists that have a very strong world and something that you don’t see every day in movies. Artistic projects like Little Girl Blue or The Ice Tower. These are the kinds of movies that I want to be a part of, with these kinds of artists. I want their cinema to exist.’

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Karma and Roma Elastica premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

BOYD HOLBROOK

May 22, 2026

Atonement, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Milk, Run All Night
Cannes Dispatch festival ticket
Atonement, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Milk, Run All Night

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by GREG WILLIAMS/JANE CROWTHER

The last time Boyd Holbrook was at Cannes Film Festival he was on the Croisette with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a huge operation on a big budget Hollywood film directed by James Mangold. ‘Yeah, they let me tag along on that one,’ he chuckles when I meet him in his modest Airbnb apartment in the centre of Cannes ahead of his premiere. This year, he arrives with a much smaller film (the first feature by Reed Van Dyk), Atonement – a pertinent tale based on a New Yorker article about a US marine who feels compelled to connect to the family who lost all their men during a firefight in the 2003 Iraq war. ‘I’m a small cog in the wheel of a giant film like Indiana Jones. I’m very grateful to be in that. It was such a great experience. But this is obviously such a richer experience in terms of why I got into making movies, and what, to me, cinema is really about.’

Atonement, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Milk, Run All Night

Filmed in Jordan and chronologically, Atonement follows Lou (Holbrook) as he engages with his enemy using a 40-cal machine gun during a visceral and terrifying opener where a local family, the Khachaturians, inadvertently get caught in the crossfire. Ten years later, broken and suffering from PTSD like many of his unit, Lou discovers an article written by war reporter Michael Reid (Kenneth Branagh) about the incident and he reaches out to the journalist in the hope of brokering a meeting with the family, now living in California. What follows is a study in the inhumanity of war, the trauma suffered by so many (as a character says ‘when a gun is shot, the bullet goes both ways’) and the hope of reconciliation. ‘Having a mother wave her own baby’s white shirt to surrender is soul-crushing. It’s a reminder of how important life is,’ Boyd tells me as we hang out on his sunny balcony and he considers how pertinent the subject matter has become in light of today’s news headlines. ‘When I found out about this film, I thought it was incredible but maybe not really relevant right now – this happened 23 years ago. And strangely enough, here we are…’

Atonement, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Milk, Run All Night

Boyd found the experience of channeling PTSD an overwhelming one. ‘Living in guilt and shame, that’s where Lou’s resonating in life. It’s wreaking so much havoc in his life. There’s the scene outside the club where he literally breaks and has a panic attack. I did so much preparation that I literally had a panic attack. It was so real for me, that I’d taken this woman’s children and husband. I was inconsolable.’ The challenge and investigation that goes into his process as an actor is what he thrives on, he says. ‘I love projects like these where I have no idea how I’m going to crack this. Before this, I did Johnny Cash [in A Complete Unknown]. I knew that Joaquin Phoenix had done it. It’s going to happen, whether you’re ready or not. I love that pressure. It’s so exciting to me, having to figure things out, and to really push myself, and to get scared, and fuck up, and fail, fail, fail, fail, and fail until you get it right; until you start figuring it out. You can’t use any tricks that you used on the last one. You have to start from square one. Every actor is probably going to blow a little bit of smoke and say that they figured it out. You try to do as much prep as you can. But that is also part of it. When you’re there on the day, you’re discovering it. I love being so prepared that I’m free to do whatever I want, and you have new discoveries.’

Acting is also something he doesn’t take for granted. When I mention that I loved his work in Narcos, he smiles. ‘You know, I was about to stop acting, right before Narcos. I’d been in a bunch of films, and filmmakers… I’d done a lot of cool projects, but I just wasn’t making a living. And then Narcos happened, and basically opened up the whole world for me.’ Having gone to a place of almost quitting and then found success has been good for him, he thinks. ‘Some actors have – I won’t use names – come out of the gate really hot. But I think there’s a birth, life, and death to everything. There’s not another man in the world that I would want to be, or have another life than what I have now. I love my journey. I’ve learned so much. I’m an incredibly flawed person, but I found identity and self and so much through trying to portray humanity. I know how pretentious that might sound, but I really care.’ I ask if he stays in character during his process. ‘ No, I genuinely enjoy being on set, and the vibe of the people and everyone there. I love the kind of switching back and forth, and dropping in and dropping out. I only think I can do that because I do a lot of prep work. Do I remember my takes? Yeah. I know exactly how it should be done by the second or third take, because I can’t stand going home and having 20/20 hindsight. I had that early on in my career, and I couldn’t stand that. So now I try to edit that as we go.’

Atonement, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Milk, Run All Night

A Kentucky native (‘I’m from a very, very small town in the Appalachia’), he’s the son of a coal miner and real estate agent. Acting wasn’t something that was in his family. ‘I saw a film called Slam by Saul Williams when I was 16. I just knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I was in some programmes for art when I was a kid, because I used to love to draw, and that was up until sixth or eighth grade. In high school, they cut the art programmes. There was no acting in school plays. I had no idea how to do it, but I knew that one day I was going to be an actor.’ An artistic kid, Boyd was a poet in his younger years. ‘Like all poetry, mine was about… everything. I think especially in that pivotal age, our teenage years to your early 20s – it’s all about Rumi and all those poets. ‘Don’t go back to sleep. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.’  I was really interested in that. And now it’s more about expression and performance. ’ I wonder what he might have done for work had acting not worked out. ‘Good question,’ he laughs. ‘I don’t think I can do anything else. I don’t know, man…’

Atonement, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Milk, Run All Night

Atonement premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
Boyd wears Loewe 
Stylist Chloe Hartstein at The Wall Group
Grooming Charlie Cullen at Forward Artists

CATE BLANCHETT

May 21, 2026

Cate Blanchett, Displacement Film Fund, UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum, Earthshot Prize
Cannes Dispatch festival ticket
Cate Blanchett, Displacement Film Fund, UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum, Earthshot Prize

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER

Cate Blanchett has been to Cannes many times; both with her films and as a jury president. But she returns to the festival this year on a more personal mission. She conducted one of the festival’s ‘A Rendez Vous with…’ career Q&As reserved for icons of the film industry as well as appearing on a panel as chair to announce the five filmmakers who will receive a short film grant from the Displacement Film Fund. Initiated at UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum and now in its second year, the fund champions and funds filmmakers who concentrate their storytelling on displaced people, or have experienced it themselves. Blanchett has worked tirelessly to bring the Fund to life, combining financial support with access to industry networks, and enlisting the help of Hubert Bals Fund and IFFR as Managing Partners. Generous contributions from Master Mind, Uniqlo, Droom en Daad, the Tamer Family Foundation, Amahoro Coalition, and most recently the SP Lohia Foundation made the Fund possible.

Cate Blanchett, Displacement Film Fund, UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum, Earthshot Prize
Cate Blanchett, Displacement Film Fund, UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum, Earthshot Prize

This year Blanchett announced that Mohammed Amer, Annemarie Jacir, Akuol de Mabior, Bao Nguyen and Rithy Panh would be allocated at €100,000 budget to tell their stories, with their completed film premiering at the International Film Festival Rotterdam which runs from the 28 January to 7 February 2027. Last year’s shorts were hailed by The Guardian as ‘an anthology of five brilliant miniature artworks – shocking, funny, confessional, and deeply mysterious… a tremendous collection’. The reception cemented the Fund as a vital platform for displaced filmmakers to share voices too often silenced. Those films will also be shown at Tokyo International Film Festival and the New York’s Film Forum in the autumn.

Displacement Film Fund, UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum, Earthshot Prize
Annemarie Jacir, Bao Nguyen, Cate Blanchett, Akuol de Mabior, Mohammed Amer

Blanchett is a UNHCR Global Goodwill Ambassador and a member of the Earthshot Prize Council as well as an actor and producer, and is passionate about putting a spotlight on unrepresented voices. ‘Our first round of DFF shorts have been met with huge enthusiasm from both the industry and our partners, while challenging expectations about what stories of displacement can look like on screen. The short form is a fantastic medium for these narratives and the way audiences are connecting with the first five films is extraordinary. I’m heartened by the success of our first cohort and thrilled to be revealing the next group of artists to be supported. We’re grateful to be hosted by Thierry Frémaux and the Cannes Film Festival who continue to champion our cause and make space for us in this most celebrated annual gathering of cinema.’

Cate Blanchett, Displacement Film Fund, UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum, Earthshot Prize

Greg Williams caught her ahead of the premiere of Garance on the roof terrace at the Palais du Festival where her Sarah Burton for Givenchy gown was as dramatic as the tales being told on screen in the theatres downstairs…

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Displacement Film Fund is now taking submissions at
www./iffr.com/en/iffr-pro-submissions/film-entry

LÉA SEYDOUX

May 21, 2026

Corsage, Gentle Monster, Adèle Exarchopoulos, The Unknown
Cannes Dispatch festival ticket
Corsage, Gentle Monster, Adèle Exarchopoulos, The Unknown

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER

Léa Seydoux and her Blue Is The Warmest Colour co-star Adèle Exarchopoulos were reunited in Cannes as they both arrived at the festival with films this year. The duo shared the Palme d’Or award for their performances as newcomers in 2013, thirteen years later Seydoux in the race for gold again with her role in Marie Kreutzer’s In Competition entry, Gentle Monster. In the Corsage filmmaker’s latest, she plays Lucy, a pianist and mother who is horrified when her husband (played by Laurence Rupp) is investigated by police after child porn is found on his computer. The gentle monster of the title is the seemingly well-adjusted partner Lucy has seen no red flags in, and as the case progresses she experiences rollercoaster emotions of having lived with, and loved, a predator.

Corsage, Gentle Monster, Adèle Exarchopoulos, The Unknown

The film was initially inspired by a newspaper article Kreutzer read, but gained added resonance when Florian Teichtmeister, the actor who played Emperor Franz-Joseph in Corsage, was found guilty of possessing child porn. Kreutzer told journalists at the press conference in Cannes that she then felt this became more of a reason to create the film and address the subject matter. Seydoux told the conference that the emotionally-charged role was a challenge but a gratifying one. ‘She goes through different states of emotion at the same time as the spectator, you’re totally with her and you feel total empathy,’ she said of her character. ‘You discover the film through her. [In playing her] I tried to live in the spur of the moment and be in the state of total empathy.’ Seydoux was also nervous of singing on camera for the first time in her career, and learnt to play the piano. The film was rapturously received at its premiere, before which Greg Williams shot Seydoux at the Majestic Hotel.

Corsage, Gentle Monster, Adèle Exarchopoulos, The Unknown

The actor also has Arthur Harari’s body-swap drama The Unknown at the festival, in which she plays a woman who has a one night stand with a man and when she awakes the two have swap consciousnesses. As David, trapped in her body, Seydoux’s character questions identity and gender roles. The two films are vastly different projects but speak to audiences about pertinent themes. As Seydoux told Variety this week; ‘with the fakeness of cinema, you can make the truth appear.’

Corsage, Gentle Monster, Adèle Exarchopoulos, The Unknown

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Gentle Monster and The Unknown premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

JAVIER BARDEM

May 20, 2026

Javier Bardem, Marina Sylvie Foïs, Melina Matthews, Victoria Luengo
Cannes Dispatch festival ticket
Javier Bardem, Marina Sylvie Foïs, Melina Matthews, Victoria Luengo

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER

Javier Bardem’s latest film, El ser querido, is the perfect subject matter for a movie premiering at cinéaste Cannes Film Festival – it charts the making of a film as a father and daughter come together to work on a project and their dysfunctional relationship. Greg Williams captured the actor on his balcony at the JW Marriott on the Croisette, before Bardem stepped on the red carpet. In the film from director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Bardem plays a famous director going through a personal crisis who offers his estranged actor daughter (Victoria Luengo) a role of his latest opus, only for past hurt to surface and Bardem’s volatile helmer to rage about losing the light and eating on camera. He is coercive, threatening and controlling. The toxic masculinity on display is something Bardem said was widespread and institutionalised in his press conference earlier in the day.

Javier Bardem, Marina Sylvie Foïs, Melina Matthews, Victoria Luengo

‘The problem comes from the bad education that we had received for many ages, which I’m part of. I’m 57 years old, coming from a very machista country called Spain, where there is an average of two women killed monthly by their ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends, which is horrible,’ he told journalists. ‘And we kind of normalised it. I mean, are we fucking nuts? We are killing women because some men think they own them, they possess them.’  He went on to expand the criticism wider than personal or social, to world politics. ‘That problem also goes to Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin and Mr. Netanyahu, the big balls man saying, ‘my cock is bigger than yours, and I’m gonna bomb the shit out of you.’ It’s a fucking male toxic behavior that is creating thousands of dead people, so yeah, we have to talk about it. And I think we are talking about it… We are more aware of it, thankfully, because maybe 20 years ago [this] was something that nobody will pay attention to as a problem, and, and I think this movie speaks about that…in this movie there are three people that say ‘no’ to [my character]: three women.’

Javier Bardem, Marina Sylvie Foïs, Melina Matthews, Victoria Luengo

Bardem went on to discuss the war in Gaza and to explain his decision to use his stature in the public eye to prompt debate. ‘I don’t have any other power or more power than you guys, but I use it in the best way I know.’ When asked if he worries about being so outspoken he admitted that ‘the fear does exist, granted, but one has to do things even if you feel a bit scared or afraid. You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror, look at yourself in the eyes. My mother taught me to be the way I am. There is no plan B. This entails consequences, which I am fully ready to shoulder.’

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
El ser querido premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

DIEGO CALVA

May 20, 2026

Babylon, Club Kid, Narcos Mexico, On Swift Horses
Cannes Dispatch festival ticket
Babylon, Club Kid, Narcos Mexico, On Swift Horses

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER

Mexican actor Diego Calva was as thrilled with the film he’s presenting at Cannes as the audience at the premiere who gave Club Kid a rousing seven-minute standing ovation, chanting the name of the child actor in the project as writer-director Jordan Firstman lifted him aloft above the seats. ‘I was in Los Angeles two weeks ago, and the producer called me, and said, ‘We want to do a screening for you, so you can see it before Cannes,’ Calva says over a pick-me-up espresso martini in the bar at the Martinez Hotel when Hollywood Authentic catches up with him. ‘I said, ‘no’. I wanted to see it here. It was my first time watching it, and it just felt really special. Because it’s very specific to this universe of New York, drugs, parties. But it’s also really universal. I love when I do a project that I can show my grandmother, my mum, my junkie friends… and they’re all going to like it!’ 

Babylon, Club Kid, Narcos Mexico, On Swift Horses

A buzzy hit on the Croisette this festival, Club Kid follows Peter, a NY party promoter (played by Firstman) whose drugs/sex/dancing existence is challenged when he discovers he’s father to a young boy (Reggie Absolom). Calva plays a child therapist who epitomes love and tenderness, his warmth extending to a fizzing chemistry with Peter. Firstman first came to prominence via his online presence and has calibrated that into a spiky, funny, heartfelt movie that plays like Chaplin’s The Kid crossed with Trainspotting and Saturday Night Fever. Calva has Instagram and posted footage of the premiere and after-party but, he says, he still likes to think of himself as ‘an outsider’ both in terms of social media and Hollywood – despite having high profile projects under his belt. He’s appeared in Narcos Mexico, made a splash as the lead in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, appeared opposite Jacob Elordi in On Swift Horses and most recently, joined the award-winning team of The Night Manager for season two. 

‘I do belong to movies. Movies are my life. But I don’t want to belong too much to an industry; to feel like, ‘I’m part of this. I control it’. I like the idea of the immigrant, the foreigner who’s visiting this. Nobody owns a movie. The directors, the actors, the producers – we all do the movie. But then the movie is out, and it belongs to everyone. And everyone should be invited to this party called cinema.’ Cannes is certainly a party for cinema and this is Calva’s first time at the event. ‘Being in Cannes for me is really emotional. I was at the party last night, and I called my mom. It was 4am in the morning, but it was 3pm in Mexico. I cried, and I said, ‘Mom, I’m here’. I decided to dedicate my life to movies. Movies saved my life so many times. Now I’m here.’

Babylon, Club Kid, Narcos Mexico, On Swift Horses

His writer-director-co-star Jordan Firstman has been equally moved by his experience. He went viral at the premiere by kissing Calva post-credits in a euphoric moment. Calva laughs at the notion that it was wish fulfillment for audience members who’d been so taken with their onscreen relationship, which crackles with want and love. It’s the sort of chemistry that is hard to find. ‘The relationship of a director and an actor is a first date, your first impression,’ he shrugs. ‘Jordan got so open with me. He really told me stories about his life, and why he wanted to do this movie. He told me something really cool: ‘I’m still learning how to be alive’. I love the idea that this movie is a coming of age for a 30-year-old adolescent. When someone is open, and so excited, and has something to say… that’s what all actors want. We really want to be part of someone’s dream – not someone’s job.’ What did the duo discuss on their first ‘date’? ‘ I told him stories about my childhood, living in Mexico City, getting into some situations – I used to be a skateboarder, and I had a record label. And how movies saved my life. You talk about all these things in the first two hours of meeting someone on Zoom, then when I met Jordan in person, he kind of had already built the relationship. When you’re working with someone who has so much love; you want to be part of it. And the chemistry…What is chemistry? First of all, how do you define that?’

Babylon, Club Kid, Narcos Mexico, On Swift Horses

When he’s asked to define it, he sips his drink and thinks. ‘Acting is more about silence than talking. Now, I’m talking. This is easy. But being silent… It’s all about the passion of the untold. It’s all about the silence. With Jordan, the silence was so easy. Sometimes, when you act, when you have to cry in a scene, and you’re able to just remember your character’s life, not your own… That’s what I was thinking about in this movie – not acting.’ The movie has the same effect on viewers; though it’s gloriously snarky and funny, the heart is real. At the premiere, tears were flowing amid the fisting gags and vomit scenes. ‘We all have trauma, right?’ Calva says. ‘And trauma is like a hole. We are always trying to fill that hole. What if we realise that that hole makes us more… light. You know? It takes a weight out of us. And also, we can have a party there. That’s Club Kid. It’s a party in the hole of trauma.’

Babylon, Club Kid, Narcos Mexico, On Swift Horses

Calva is in town with two movies, he’s also presenting Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell in which he has a small, but pivotal role. ‘Her Private Hell is about a completely different story and a completely different situation. Jordan is my fucking friend. Nic is my friend, of course, but it’s different… He likes to play one song during the whole day. One song every day. We were listening to Suicide and Alan Vega, Iggy Pop. He asked me to just look at the lens, and listen to the song one, two, three, four times. And then he’ll say, ‘You did something with your eye. I like it. We have it.’ And what I did… I don’t know. It’s like a mantra. And that’s amazing. Actors are horrible and sensitive, blah blah. But we want to deliver. We want to please. When someone is like, ‘Just be you’ – whoa, we are in fucking trouble. But then he captures you.’

Babylon, Club Kid, Narcos Mexico, On Swift Horses

Despite imdb’s claims that he is playing Che Guevara in an upcoming project, he’s not – though he looks just like him. ‘I would love to play Che Guevara – but in a vampire movie. America is the humans. Cuba is the vampires. And we’re conquering the world.’ He is appearing in Danny Ramirez’s football film. Baton, alongside recent Hollywood Authentic subject, Lewis Pullman. ‘I admire Danny so much because as a Latino in Hollywood, he is building a career, and now he is directing and acting and producing. And he invited me to play his best friend in the movie. I play a completely weird character. I’ve never played something like that. I’ve been lead in a movie, right? But I love supporting characters. I love to be part of the universe, and make other people shine in a way that you have more room. For me, the lesson is: Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights – one scene, and you will remember that scene forever. I want to do things like that.’ Based on the love for Club Kid out of Cannes, he’ll be taking his pick…

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Club Kid and Her Private Hell premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

JOHN LENNON: THE LAST INTERVIEW

May 20, 2026

John Lennon, Steven Soderbergh, Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon

Words by JANE CROWTHER

The 8th December 1980 is a grim date for Lennon fans – it’s known that the former Beatle was gunned down by Mark Chapman outside his apartment in New York’s Dakota Building. What is less known is the free-wheeling interview he gave to a radio team from San Francisco in the hours before. Having just made Double Fantasy with his wife, Yoko Ono, after a step back from the spotlight to become a house husband and dad to his son Sean, Lennon was full of renewed creativity and opinions on everything from masculinity, politics and childcare to fame, legacy and artistry. Intro by the team who interviewed Lennon aside, Steven Soderbergh has taken that audio interview and laid it out in all its prescient, charming, time-capsule glory.

John Lennon, Steven Soderbergh, Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon

Despite the interviewers being warned that Lennon should not be asked about the Beatles or his past, he’s an open subject – volunteering memories of meeting and gelling with McCartney, delving into his first date with Yoko (‘we didn’t make love’) and discussing his party boy era. It’s unusual to hear such a huge star talk in such an unfiltered and personal way, and feels like a true window into the person behind the personality. Also on the table for discussion: the pro and cons of global fame, the public hatred of Yoko, trying to keep your kid off sugar and marketing, the daily schedule of a creative couple and why celebrities are so inclined to join cults and movements. Intelligent, informed and disarmingly self-aware, Lennon is an entertaining orator and in many ways, ahead of his time in his thoughts on working-from-home, ally-ship, Totalitarian governments and polarised politics. 

John Lennon, Steven Soderbergh, Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon

Yoko is equally fascinating, heard at the beginning of the interview but rarely later, despite having insight into a phenomenon that still continues: the particular public punishment of women. It’s clear she and John had a magnetic attraction, understanding and partnership – yet she is sidelined fast, whether by the interviewers at the time or by Soderbergh’s editing. It’s also a shame that the personal photos and footage of both of them run out towards the end of the film to be replaced by AI slop, something it feels likely hand-on creative Lennon would not have been into.  

John Lennon, Steven Soderbergh, Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon

Still, as a film that captures a cultural icon at a crossroads in his life when he felt he was on the cusp of transformation, it’s both sad and celebratory. Lennon had achieved so much before that December morning and felt that he was about to embark on a new phase of prodigious songwriting, instead his potential was extinguished by someone else. It’s a Sliding Doors interview: had he planned a different day after his chat instead of heading out of the door, what might we have seen from him? As a historical record of a mobius strip moment it’s an intrigue.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of MISHPOOKAH ENTERTAINMENT GROUP
John Lennon: The Last Interview premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

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